Developing an Integrated Infrastructure Strategy: Lessons Learned from the BaNES Swindon and Wiltshire ICS

The BaNES Swindon and Wiltshire (BSW) ICS has a strong track record of effective estate strategy development and implementation, which has underpinned a programme of improvements to our hospital, community health and primary care facilities over the past few years. Further, publicly-funded, capital schemes are under development. We have been on a journey from individual organisations developing plans to meet their estates needs to a more collective approach. However, as has been the case for many ICSs, we recognised that we had some way to go before we had a fully integrated system-wide approach to strategic estates planning, and we changed our approach accordingly.

Delivering high-quality patient care requires an integrated approach to infrastructure, incorporating buildings, equipment, plant and digital technology into a single, coherent, environmentally sustainable strategy. New ways of working create the need to go beyond just thinking about facilities to considering buildings, equipment and digital technology as a combined asset.

Our transition from a silo approach to healthcare service delivery to integrated system-wide approaches, reflected in our new Health and Care Model, drives a need for new ways of thinking and for infrastructure to be seen as a collective asset rather than an organisation’s own property.

All forms of healthcare infrastructure need to be planned (and funded) on a system basis, e.g., the concept of the ‘smart hospital’ needs to be extended to all healthcare facilities within our system.

Environmental sustainability targets and our Net Zero Carbon (NZC) commitments need a joined-up system-wide approach if they are to be achieved. NZC targets necessitate thinking differently about healthcare buildings and taking an infrastructure-based approach.

This presentation will describe the progress we have made (supported by Currie & Brown), the challenges we have faced and the opportunities we have identified through taking an integrated approach to infrastructure planning.